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Despite the demand for transparency, traditional thinking still holds that when brands receive bad news they should do their best to keep it quiet. When a brand disrupts this pattern and amplifies its bad news, it becomes newsworthy. This describes the case of a gunmaker that issued a press release when its bank refused to continue doing business with it.

The idea that most Americans have lost the ability to speak civilly to each other in these uncertain times may not be Robert Reich’s alone, but he offered an imperative specific to the 2,500+ communicators at the international PRSA confab—in an age when people don’t know how to talk to each other, or how to listen, it’s communications pros who must act as stewards and promoters of civility. “You are people who set the tone very much for what we and how we communicate,” Reich says. “And there is now a vitriol, and anger in the system. We are not communicating.”

Google has announced it will be shutting down its seven-year-old social network Google+ for consumers. And while those that swear by Instagram and Snapchat are unlikely to miss the struggling platform, Google+ did get a few things right in terms of communications offerings. Here are three Google+ features that communicators might miss—and some suggestions on how to find those offerings elsewhere.

The common thinking about digital literacy is that the younger you are, the more you understand it. Yet common sense is off the mark, according to a study of more than 7,000 students who struggled “mightily” to identify online content. Marketers need to understand why digital literacy is important to the bottom line and ensure they and their staffs have the skills and knowledge to use and recommend the best channels.

Healthy fast-food chain Pret A Manger is in hot water after reports on Oct. 7 that another customer died from an allergic reaction to a Pret food item, making this the second account of an allergen-related death at the chain within the past two years. The brand seems to be reacting correctly, though.

“The millennial and Gen Z audience are always looking behind the marketing narrative at the purpose and the intention of companies and brands that they engage with,” says TwentyFirstCenturyBrand’s Jonathan Mildenhall (formerly of Airbnb and Coca-Cola). Here are some key tips for brands looking to define that purpose from Mildenhall’s keynote address at the PRSA International Conference 2018.

With Americans set to spend $9 billion on Halloween this year, it could be a good time for brands to bewitch their fan with creative and spooky communication, argues LDWW director David Wolpert. Don’t be a zombie, entice influencers to inject some life (or afterlife) into your brand’s message.

Brands make sustainability commitments all the time. Some gain headlines and go viral. Others receive little or no coverage. A veteran of sustainability communications, FleishmanHillard SVP Bob Axelrod, offers four tips to ensure your sustainability efforts and other CSR work will receive the coverage it merits.

There’s more demand than ever for companies that specialize in teaching brands how to write for voice. A leader among them, PullString, built a platform that enables brands to create highly engaging voice applications for devices like Alexa and Google Home without writing any code.

It was temporary relief that Facebook’s largest data breach to date occurred in the midst of non-stop coverage of the Judge Brett Kavanaugh brouhaha. Still, the incident and a story in The Washington Post point to serious issues for Facebook as it attempts to monitor its gargantuan site.